No other state has embraced and preserved its civil rights history more thoroughly than Alabama. Nor is there a place where that history is richer. Alabama’s Civil Rights Trail tells of Alabama’s great civil rights events, as well as its lesser-known moments, in a compact and accessible narrative, paired with a practical guide to Alabama’s preserved civil rights sites and monuments.

In his history of Alabama’s civil rights movement, Cradle of Freedom (University of Alabama Press, 2004), Frye Gaillard contends that Alabama played the lead role in a historic movement that made all citizens of the nation, black and white, more free. This book, geared toward the casual traveler and the serious student alike, showcases in a vividly illustrated and compelling manner, valuable and rich details. It provides a user-friendly, graphic tool for the growing number of travelers, students, and civil rights pilgrims who visit the state annually.

The story of the civil rights movement in Alabama is told city by city, region by region, and town by town, with entries on Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, Tuscaloosa, Tuskegee, and Mobile, as well as chapters on the Black Belt and the Alabama hill country. Smaller but important locales such as Greensboro, Monroeville, and Scottsboro are included, as are more obscure sites like Hale County’s Safe House Black History Museum and the birthplace of the Black Panther Party in Lowndes County.

Frye Gaillard has been a journalist for the Associated Press and the Charlotte Observer. He is the author of Race, Rock and Religion: Profiles from a Southern Journalist, The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, Becoming Truly Free: 300 Years of Black History in the Carolinas, and Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America. He is currently writer-in-residence at the University of South Alabama in Mobile.

Juan Williams is a leading political commentator, journalist, and intellectual of American cultural life. He is the author of Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience, and Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965, the companion volume to PBS’s landmark documentary of the same name.

"The hundred-fifty mile stretch along U.S. Highway 80 stretching through the Alabama Black Belt from Phenix City to Demopolis became the epic center of the most important human rights movement of the Twentieth Century. Fortunately for the many visitors from around the world to the terrain of those great struggles during the 1950s and 1960s, Alabama has not only maintained that trail of horror, violence, pride, and justice, but now celebrates it as the beginning of a new era in state history. Frye Gaillard has now provided a guide book worthy of the events that transpired there."

—Dr. Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus, Auburn University

"Frye Gaillard's Alabama's Civil Rights Trail broadens the [civil rights] story considerably by examining in-detail the people and events in Alabama that helped to accelerate the struggle for human rights. For Gaillard, every individual and each act of resistance that helped to secure consitutional liberties for African Americans deserves recognition. ... Alabama's Civil Rights Trail offers both scholars and an interested public a refreshing resource for examining the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama."--Southern Historian

"Gaillard is also to be commended for the breadth of this book. The 23 cities included in the guide span the full length of the state, from Florence to Bayou la Batre. In contrast, the state tourism department’s civil rights trail guide covers only five cities, Birmingham, Greensboro, Selma, Montgomery and Tuskegee. Gaillard’s more inclusive view of the important sites throughout the state provides us with a much more accurate picture and reflects the scholarship of his previous works on Alabama’s rich civil rights history."--Mobile Press-Register

“Alabama is known around the world for its natural beauty, the Crimson Tide football team, and its southern traditions. Alabama is also known to the world as the scene, the intriguing and mythic place, for so many vital lessons of American history—specifically civil rights history. . . . These are places that harbor the spirits of human struggle with right and wrong, triumph and despair, courage and cowardice. They are the sites of historic struggles for justice under law and human rights, central to the ideals of America’s Founding Fathers. . . . To visit Alabama today is to see and feel Dr. King’s vision come to life. The fight for racial equality has made so many strides. The state today is a testament to the many people—black and white, young and old—who took heroic stands at these schools, courthouses, and churches, who fought and shed blood for equal rights.”

—From the foreword by Juan Williams

"Frye Gaillard's 2004 Cradle of Freedom has become essential reading for an understanding of Alabama's role in the Civil Rights movement. His 2009 publication, Alabama's Civil Rights Trail, serves as an excellent companion piece--equal parts history and travel guide. . . . [This book] is a valuable contribution to the literature of the movement. . . . [It] is an invaluable guide for the growing field of civil rights tourism, providing a rich history of both well-known locations and little-known sites."--Alabama Review